The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  “It’s bad luck to sell a boat before it’s finished.”

  “For the seller or the buyer?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well,” the administer said dismissively. “We’re not superstitious natives, are we? Eh, Issac?” And with that, he winked at the teenaged boy he’d brought with him who, though dark as a native islander, was too lanky and long-waisted to be of pure stock. And Kuwa’i was about to speak again but suddenly could not find the words—halted mid-protest in frozen disbelief—because though the boy’s face was a stranger to him, his teeth were Elissa’s.

  And a moment later the big man laughed uproariously at Kuwa’i’s afflicted expression, and Kuwa’i realized this was the administer’s joke—this meeting between he and the boy. The administer knew of their history, or part of it. But looking at the boy, it was obvious to Kuwa’i that the joke had been played twice, because the teen looked as confused by his employer’s laughter as Kuwa’i was informed by it. As if to confirm Kuwa’i’s suspicions, the administer clapped the boy on the shoulder and whispered loudly, “I’ve got a story for you later.”

  Kuwa’i searched the boy’s dark features for something to call his own, and found nothing. Nor was there Myer. “The boy looks like his mother,” Kuwa’i said.

  The boy’s face became suspicious.

  The administer laughed again, absently waving off the drama threatening to unfold before him in the same way he had waved off Kuwa’i’s protests earlier. “So then we are agreed. The boat is mine, yeah?”

  The boy, who was beginning to suspect what he might be looking at, glared at Kuwa’i from under a growing scowl.

  “I’ll be back to pick it up in a month,” the administer said.

  Kuwa’i could not bring himself to say another word.

  Over the next several weeks Kuwa’i made it his goal to learn as much as he could about the man named Underhill, this island administrator with a fondness for jokes. He traveled to Moloa and spent time in the taverns, buying drinks for those in the mood to talk. He learned through subtle cross-examination of the local patronage that the administer was merely the most visible manifestation of an extensive family line—one whose various filaments stretched throughout the hereditary topsoil of the islands. His people were from the mainland but had been in the Pacific for generations, amassing land and cattle and power, and more recently, new friends in faraway places.

  One thirsty old fisherman was particularly forthcoming on the subject, “He’s nephew to the mayor, uncle to most of the police force, Godfather to the local pastor, and boss to half the cattle men on the island.”

  A further round of drinks revealed that Underhill was also, most interestingly perhaps, cousin to the town grocer, Issac Porter, who had in previous, happier times been father to a strapping son named Myer, now many years deceased of a septic eye. The teenaged boy who’d accompanied Underhill to the boat shop was named Issac after his supposed paternal great-grandfather, and had been put on the administer’s payroll as an enforcer. The boy was widely reputed to be good at his job. So good, in fact, that finding people who would talk about him required the last of Kuwa’i’s drinking money. “Not a big lad,” one drinker slurred. “But fast. He gets the tough jobs.”

  “Jobs?”

  “He’s a close-up artist,”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No guns.” The old man took the last swallow of his drink and glanced toward the door. “He carries knives in his belt.”

  Kuwa’i returned to the valley the next day but, for perhaps the first time in his life, had lost interest in boats.

  Still, he and his son worked. They had to, because Kuwa’i had taken money. The boat was no longer theirs, but the administer’s. And now, in a way, they worked for him, too. Kuwa’i wondered at the skills of a man that found himself so easily made employer out of customer. That difference was everything.

  Occasionally, people would come to watch the project develop, often making comments, or asking questions—but more and more as the boat took shape around its elegant walking tree backbone, the visitors stood back in reverential silence before the ambition of the project. It was the largest craft Kuwa’i had ever attempted, a twenty-eight-foot gaff-rigged sloop, fully nine feet abeam, with an enormous shark fin keel the size of a man. The single cabin dropped below decks and was large enough for two beds, a table, and a large navigation desk. A round window of imported glass looked out from the stern. The sails were bent to the spares with robands and mast hoops the size of dinner plates. The fastenings were bronze. Rising above the mainsail, a jackyard flapped loosely in the breeze along a double row of reefing points. Extending out to the sides, like the bent wings of an albatross, two knife-thin outriggers balanced the project.

  Most shipwrights believed you could tell how fast a ship was by looking at it, and everything Kuwa’i knew of boats said this boat was fast—perhaps the fastest craft ever to see the lagoon.

  Every week or so the administer would send one of his men to check on the progress of the ship, and every week Kuwa’i would give the same answer, “It’ll be done when it’s finished.” Young Issac was never among the men.

  During the protracted term of construction, it became apparent that the pale and copper-headed daughter of Mara was in some way involved in the project. Her name was Rebecca, and when Kuwa’i finally noticed her among the crowd who stopped by to watch, he had the feeling that he had missed something important, and she had already been hanging around for several days. The first time she brought the coconut of cool milk, Kuwa’i realized she and Ta’eo were lovers. Kuwa’i took his drink and stood looking at the two young people for a very long time. The girl was beautiful in a sun-damaged way—a tragedy of dark freckles obscuring her features so that you had to look closely to see what she really looked like. Beneath the paint, her features were straight and fine.

  He learned through subtle cross-examination of neighborhood friends and visiting patrons that she was soon to be married. The man was large and hot-tempered, a consigner by trade, though he spent much of his time in the taverns. His name was Isban, and he was several parts again her age. Having already worn through the affections of two, she was to be his third wife.

  Kuwa’i went to visit her mother, Mara, one afternoon and found her house contained only children of every conceivable age (and some quite unconceivable, given her marital partnership). He asked after their mother, and the children proved contradictory compasses on the matter, pointing him in several directions at once. However, by blending the advice of the eldest several, he was finally able to guess her whereabouts and found Mara at the waterfall wringing out clothes and slapping them on the hot, sun-baked boulders to dry. As he called her name, he realized it was the first time he’d spoken to her in a decade. There was no trace of anything he recognized in her, and he realized those young lovers were other people than these two gray-haired parents standing among the rocks.

  “He’s Sione’s brother-in-law, and he’ll make a good husband for her,” Mara said.

  “He’s been married twice before,” Kuwa’i said.

  “And Rebecca won’t leave so easily, I told her that already. She won’t come crying back home.”

  “Aren’t you concerned—”

  “He makes a good living. He’ll provide for her; that’s what I’m concerned about.” She bent to her work. “She won’t be marrying a poor fisherman so she can toil all day while he’s out to sea. She was meant for more than that.”

  “She’s in love with Ta’eo.”

  Mara slowed in her scrubbing but did not look up. “That will pass.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  And then she did look up, and there were cinders in her eyes. “It always does.”

  For the first time, Kuwa’i realized that after all these years, she had not forgotten. Here was revenge deeper than smashed windows and stolen tools.

  Without another word, he turned away. There was nothing to be done.


  Over the next several weeks, Kuwa’i was overwhelmed by the insight that all the island’s stories were coming to a head. There was idle talk in Wik’wai of the wedding, and Kuwa’i learned the date was already set and approaching. And, too, the ship was nearing completion. The convergence of all things suffused him with a kind of dread different from all the other dreads he’d suffered in his life. This was the shifting and shapeless dread of one who fears he’ll live to see the far shore of what he cannot imagine: that time hanging out there in front of them all when there would be no boat, and no walking trees to replace it, and no Rebecca bringing them coconuts of cool milk—and Ta’eo on this island without love and without prospects. He thought of Elissa and her smashed-out teeth, and he thought of her baby, and every day he worked on the boat like the work would last forever, because it was all the time they had.

  On the last Wednesday, three days before the wedding, a squall blew across the lagoon, churning the blue-green water to chop. The administer and his men arrived soon after at the launch.

  “It is beautiful,” the administer said.

  “She’ll float,” Kuwa’i said.

  “You speak with the modesty of a craftsman who knows he has created a masterpiece.”

  Kuwa’i hung his head. “Yes, she is a wonder.”

  “What is she called?”

  “She’s the only boat I haven’t been able to name. I don’t force the names; I wait for something to come to me. Nothing has.”

  “You tell my men she’s not done.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Looks done to me.”

  “There’s still veneering to do. And the roamings need work.”

  “I’ll take it as it is.”

  “The steering isn’t done yet.”

  “When?” the administer snapped.

  “It could be a while, I still have to—”

  “My men will come for it in three days.”

  The administer turned to go, stepping down off the ladder. His men followed him up the steep embankment.

  “Her,” Kuwa’i called after him.

  The administer turned. “What?”

  “You said ‘it.’ She’s a her.” Kuwa’i made a decision. “And I’m no longer interested in selling her to you.”

  “Are you trying to raise the price?”

  “At any price, I’ve decided she’s not for sale.”

  “Not for sale?” The administer smiled sadly, like a disappointed father. He made a subtle gesture with his hand, and his men turned and faced the old man. “Kuwa’i, what are you saying?”

  “Another boat, but not this one. I can’t sell you this one.”

  “Then maybe I’ll just take it.”

  “You can’t do that, Administrator.”

  “Why not?”

  “You may control Ahana and Motoa, but you have no authority under my roof.”

  The administer turned to his bodyguards, “Prove him wrong.”

  Against the early morning quiet, on the day on which his story would end, Kuwa’i woke shouting from his sleep. He sprang upright in his bunk, sweating like a pig, gasping like a fish taking its first breath of air. It had been a nightmare of falling. Outside his window, the sun had yet to rise, but the first hint of pink colored the sky. He rubbed his bruises softly and tried to work life back into his cramped limbs. In the three days since his meeting with the administer, the marks of his beating had come into full flower. “Today,” he said to himself in the silence of his room. Today was the wedding. Today the administer would come for the boat.

  He put on his worn sandals and walked to his son’s room where he found his bunk empty and un-slept in. On the pillow was the small black box that they’d made for his mother’s necklaces all those years ago. Kuwa’i stared at the box, which should have been hidden in a drawer in his bedroom. He opened the lid and found it empty. The two remaining seeds were gone.

  He walked to the back of the shop where the boat was moored at the water’s edge, and he found the dock as empty as the wooden box. He descended to the sandy shores of the lagoon and let the cool water wash over his feet. The wind blew softly against his face, a gentle caress.

  “I lose everything to you,” he whispered to the ocean.

  He strained his eyes into the distance and saw a dark shape disappearing around the curve of the island. He thought he saw two figures on board, one with copper hair. The darker figure waved. Kuwa’i raised his hand to wave goodbye and felt the ties that bound them as father and son pulling taut and finally severing. “A boat is like a knife,” he said.

  The ship would glide past Ahana. And though the administer might see its sails in the distance, no other ship would be fast enough to stop it. His son would see the open ocean.

  There were other islands beyond these.

  Kuwa’i thought of the wedding that would never take place, and then he went back inside to wait for the administer’s wrath.

  Five men climbed down from their horses.

  They hesitated then, lingering, checking their weapons.

  A look was exchanged, and they moved deliberately, men of clay no more. Kuwa’i didn’t trouble himself to unlock the door, so they kicked it down.

  Issac spoke first, “The boat is gone.”

  “It was a fine boat.”

  “You disappoint the administrator.”

  “I expected as much,” Kuwa’i said.

  “He is not a man used to disappointment.”

  “Then I am happy to have acquainted him with it.”

  Issac smiled. “It is you who will be making some old acquaintances today.”

  There was much Kuwa’i might have said then. He wondered if most people pleaded. “Take what you came for.”

  Issac stepped toward Kuwa’i and placed his left hand on his shoulder. His right hand touched the knife on his hip, pulling the long blade slowly from its sheath. He spoke softly, “All he wanted was the boat.”

  “That was too much.”

  Issac lifted his blade to the chest of the man who killed or was his father.

  The steel point dimpled the skin above Kuwa’i’s heart.

  Without turning, Issac said to the other riders, “Burn everything.” Then he smiled Elissa’s teeth, as if to give the old shipwright something familiar to follow him into his final denouement. He leaned forward and whispered, “When you see my mother, give her this message.” The boy’s lips brushed Kuwa’i’s ear. “Tell her she was a coward.”

  Kuwa’i nodded and closed his eyes. “As was I,” he said. “But not now.”

  A moment later there came a sharp pain in his chest, followed by a warmth, and the boy embraced him, like a son might. Then closer, clutching while Kuwa’i shuddered.

  Kuwa’i took a breath, but it hurt to breathe.

  His legs gave out.

  The boy’s eyes burned into him as he collapsed to the floor.

  There were no last words, nothing left to say. Just a yellow curl of light, and then heat, as the men set fire to the boat works. Above him smoke began to fill the room, while flames lit the shadows. Kuwa’i thought of the seeds then, like brown cashews, and he hoped they found purchase in whatever distant soils they came to. A place where they might grow strong, if not tall. A place where they might live and not kill themselves.

  The heat expanded and baked him as the fire raged, and the wood beneath him blackened and charred, until Kuwa’i turned his face at last to the cool ocean spray. He curled his hand around the warm wooden rudder, while the boat lurched in the chop, and the sails luffed for a moment before filling with wind, and Kuwa’i left his island, finally.

  JACK SHADE IN THE FOREST OF SOULS

  RACHEL POLLACK

  Rachel Pollack [www.rachelpollack.com] is the author of thirty-four books of fiction and non-fiction, including Unquenchable Fire, winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Godmother Night, winner of the World Fantasy Award. Her non-fiction includes 78 Degrees of Wisdom, often cited as “the Bible of tarot readers.”
Rachel is also a poet, a translator, and a visual artist. Her work has appeared in fifteen languages, all over the world. She is a senior faculty member of Goddard College’s MFA in creative writing program.

  Jack Shade, known in varied places and times as Journeyman Jack, or Jack Sad, or Handsome Johnny (though not any more), or Jack Summer, or Johnny Poet (though not for a long time), or even Jack Thief, was playing Old-Fashioned Poker. That was Jack’s name for it, not because the game itself was antiquated—it was Texas Hold Em, the TV game, as Jack thought of it—but because of the venue, a private hotel room, comfortable, elegant even, yet unlicensed and by private invitation only, in the age of Indian casinos no more than a few hours drive from anywhere. Jack knew that most poker was played online these days, split-screen multi-action, or in live tournaments and open cash games held in the big casinos of Vegas, Foxwoods, or Macao.

  Jack didn’t like casinos. He’d never liked them, though for years he was willing to go where the action was. But after a certain night in the Ibis Casino, a game palace most players had never heard of and would never see, where “All in” meant something very different from betting your entire stack of chips, Jack avoided even the glossiest bright-for-TV game centers, and only played his quaint, private, no-limit match-ups. Luckily for Jack, though not always, luck being luck, there were enough serious money people who knew of Jack Gamble (or Jack Spade, as some called him, though not to his face) that he could more or less summon a game to his private table at the Hotel de Reve Noire, which despite its Gallic name was in New York, on 35th Street, a block from the J. P. Morgan Museum, where Jack sometimes went to sit with the fifteenth-century Visconti-Sforza Tarot cards.

  Jack lived in the Reve Noire (possibly why some people called him Johnny Dream), but no one in the game had to know that. Let them think he came in from—somewhere else. Jack didn’t like people to know where he lived, an old habit that was still useful. The game, sometimes called Shade’s Choice, took place on the eleventh floor, the top floor of the small hotel, where despite the larger buildings all around, the full-length windows looked out to the Empire State antenna (Jack was one of the few people who knew what signal that antenna actually sent, and the messages it relayed back to the Chrysler Building’s ever-patient gargoyles), and in the other direction to a small brick house on Roosevelt Island, where Peter Midnight once played a reckless game of cards with a Traveler who outraged fashion in a black cravat.